Life insurance companies always ask questions about your family health history before giving you life insurance. If you have a strong family history of certain diseases they may set the premiums you have to pay higher than average; the price you pay for being more likely to die.

But what if your DNA profile tells a clearer and more detailed story? That you have inherited genes which means you are very likely to develop breast cancer in your 20s, or that you are at a much higher risk than the rest of the population of having a heart attack whilst relatively young, for example.

There are fears that if insurance companies have access to information like this, they will refuse to give certain people life insurance. That in turn would make it very difficult to get a mortgage and buy a house. So far the insurance industry has not used genetic testing to weight premiums, and some people think they never will, because all of us will have something negative lurking in our genes and yet most people live to a ripe old age. Others think insurance as we know it will disappear when genetic testing of everyone becomes routine.